TENNYSON'S "THE LADY OF SHALOTT": THE AMBIGUITY OF COMMITMENT

Author(s): James L. Hill

Source: The Centennial Review , FALL 1968, Vol. 12, No. 4 (FALL 1968), pp. 415-429
Published by: Michigan State University Press

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 TENNYSON'S "THE LADY OF

SHALOTT": THE AMBIGUITY

OF COMMITMENT

James L. Hill

Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" is the earliest, and in

many ways the clearest, Victorian example of the dramatiza
tion of the pathetic struggle between thought and feeling—
the mind's rational ordering of experience into patterns, and
the disruption of those patterns by emotional response which
refuses to be controlled. The interplay between the rational
and the irrational, between "head" and "heart," establishes
the poem both in its relation to one of the most pervasive
themes of Victorian literature, and as pointing directly to
Tennyson's Romantic antecedents. The ambiguities and
ironies of the poem, and the structure which brings them to
life, invite comparison with the poetry of Shelley, Keats and
Coleridge. Moreover, if we make the effort to read "The
Lady of Shalott" with the closeness we give to Romantic
poetry, two additional points become clear; first, that the
kind of generalized statement usually made about the poem,
to the effect that it is a homily on what happens to the artist
who isolates himself from society, simply fails to account for
it satisfactorily, and second, that Tennyson's craftsmanship,
for which he is justly praised, does more than give a high
sheen to Victorian platitudes.
In his Tennyson Handbook, George O. Marshall exempli
fies this emphasis on Tennyson as craftsman in his remarks
on the revision of "The Lady of Shalott":
The improvement of the 1842 text over the 1833 version shows
how an artist can redeem a poem marred by unnatural and

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 THE CENTENNIAL REVIEW

awkward phrases. A study of the two version

vision, as is a study of the text of many poem
in both the 1833 and 1842 volumes.

These comments on the meaning of the poe

of all but a few of the recent studies of Te
continues:

But it is not necessary to determine the exact allegorical sig

nificance in order to appreciate the poem. Here is a master
piece. ... A modern scholar calls the 1842 version "as near
perfect as the work of mortals ever gets to be, in structure, in
details, and in the evocation of sight, sound, and feeling."

But "The Lady of Shalott" is much more than a vaguely

allegorical poem. If Tennyson's allegory cannot be deter
mined with any degree of precision, we cannot say that the
poem approaches anything like perfection of structure and
detail, for the purpose of structure is to allow us to see as
clearly as possible the poet's meaning, and detail is significant
only as it helps to elucidate that meaning. Besides, the poem
is not allegorical in either the nineteenth-century or the tra
ditional sense. It is a symbolic structure, as Tennyson inher
ited this structure from Coleridge, Keats and Shelley, and
when we approach it in this light it proves to be as rich in
its own way as "Christabel," "The Eve of Saint Agnes" or
"Alastor."

The basic problem posed by the poem is implicit in Ten

nyson's own explanation of its significance:
The new-born love for something, for someone in the wide
world from which she has been so long secluded, takes her out
of the region of shadows into that of realities.1

iHallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson; A Memoir by his Son (New

York, 1897), I, p. 117. R. C. Tobias, in "The Year's Work in Victorian Poetry:
1964, Victorian Poetry, III (1965), pp. 126-127, disagrees with Lona Mosk
Packer's assertion ("Sun and Shadow: The Nature of Experience in Tenny
son's 'The Lady of Shalott,'" VN, no. 25, pp. 4-8) that Tennyson's statement
may be used as a basis for interpreting the poem, since the statement was
intended to provide an explanation for the poem for a book on Tennyson
for younger readers. But at no time in his life was Tennyson given to com
plex explanations of his poems or the works of others; no such comments
find their way into his biographies, and whatever remarks have come down
to us tend to be as generalized as this one, whether addressed to children or

4i6

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 THE LADY OF SHALOTT

We are told that the Lady is isolated fr

she is drawn out of her isolation by
something outside herself. The move
drawal, epitomized in her artistic preo
commitment to life or reality. But wha
in his statement is as important as what
mitment which the Lady makes, her acq
for human relationships, brings down a
she dies. Release of self leads to destruc
presents a paradox in which the sterili
withdrawal is placed alongside the proc
so that the poem already passes far bey
"empty" structure. "The Lady of Shalo
"figuring forth" of this paradox, and p
cally what is perhaps the major theme o

II

As a literary medieval ballad, "The Lady

the incantatory possibilities of the balla
established in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "La
Belle Dame Sans Merci." And Tennyson, like his predeces
sors, has the virtuosity to overcome the difficulties of con
tinuous rhyme with apparently effortless facility. But, again
like Keats and Coleridge, he uses rhyme repetition for pur
poses beyond mere decoration. Rhyme serves as a means by
which the poet attempts to hypnotize the reader and to lead
him unresisting into the imaginary world of the poem. It also
serves to emphasize the progression of images, drawing our
attention to particular details in such a way that we become
aware of their concrete reality.
Stanza one of the first section of the poem exhibits Tenny
son's manipulation of our attention through rhyme perfectly:

adults. And while Tennyson's statement is admittedly simplified, this does

not mean that it points us away from the central meaning of the poem.
Thus, while it may not provide us with an adequate basis for interpretation,
it at least gives us a hint—and a good one—that is worth following up.

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 THE CENTENNIAL REVIEW

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field a road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot.
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow,
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

The quatrain uses its first three verses to create a completely

framed landscape. In the fourth verse, Tennyson suddenly
draws our attention to the road going up to Camelot, pulling
us from a focus on the landscape as a framed whole into the
picture itself, the road acting as a perspective line to lead the
eye inward to the distant single point of Camelot.
Without introducing a single human figure, Tennyson ani
mates his description of this landscape by a careful arrange
ment of verbs. The verbal progression, "lie," "clothe,"
"meet" and "runs," moves from passive to active, each verb
releasing more energy until "runs," so that this verb, express
ing movement, marking a shift from plural to singular, and
from general to particular objects, energizes the whole land
scape into life and points its vitality toward Camelot. Con
tinuous repetition of rhyme acts further to energize the scene
through a buildup of sound which serves to create an aware
ness of, and a need for, immanent resolution. The final shift
from the single-rhyme quatrain to the new rhyme "Camelot"
effects what amounts almost to a transformation of latent to
kinetic energy, which is released to subside into the refrain.
Thus the progression of rhymes is analogous to the verbal
and imagistic progressions, all three concentrating heavily on
the final image of the distant city. Tennyson succeeds in a
very short space in creating a vital and dynamic landscape in
which his legend is to take place, and in drawing his reader
into the "reality" of that landscape by the use of rhyme and
image.
These initial verses also establish the basic symbolic pat
tern of the poem. The two major interests in the poem are

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 THE LADY OF SHALOTT

to be Camelot and the road leading to

Shalott and its surrounding river. As
and the road represent ordinary vitali
energy of life as it is usually lived. Sha
sents withdrawal; the objective percepti
of participation in its processes. These
express two kinds of energy, the energ
ing but vigorous life, and the energy of i
contemplation—or, to put it another way
the life of the mind or the imagination.
Both kinds of energy are suggested i
initial stanza. The river appears in the fir
it receives no verb, the objects closest to
the verbs of least activity: "lie," "clothe
end of the first four verses Camelot is in
it too receives no verb, the road leadin
strongest verb in the first five verses, "r
of the stanza, a tercet followed by the f
develops this suggestion of antagonistic
merely reverses the energic direction
cessation, ending with a focus on th
general pattern of movement in the stanz
section of the poem. The imagery, as w
the refrain arrangement of "Camelot
through active images in the first four v
which deal with the outside world, and
mysterious images in the Shalott tercets.
In the second section of the poem thi
change. After we have learned of the La
son introduces images which her mirror
tower. These reflections are ostensib
outer world, and as such they are appropr
the first four verses of stanza two. But
upon the tower room itself, and begin t
more prominent place in the last half o
Tennyson uses the device of focusing, n
general to the particular in order to g

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 THE CENTENNIAL REVIEW

of vitality to these reflected objects. In

from "surley village churls" to "the re
girls," with an emphasis on the spots of
stanza there is a double narrowing of fo
"troop of damsels glad" to the single "a
pad," then from a "curly shepherd-lad
page in crimson clad," again with a fin
color red. These two points of color also
feminine to masculine, from "damsels"
be developed further in the poem. Thus
shift from groups to individuals, and f
The two final stanzas of section two are
sensual images, the male knights ridin
lovers. Coupled with the image of the
pageant, a first hint of the relationship
life that will become the dominant them
In the third section, the shattering fo
sion, represented by masculine force, in
life of the Lady becomes complete. T
entirely to an individual knight, Lanc
again uses continually finer and finer de
achieve intensity and to create a sense
tality. In the first four verses of the firs
gression of stanza one, section one, is re
the verbs are charged with connotations, p
their suggestion of color, which they di
in section one:

A bow-shot from her bower-eves,

He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves,
Of bold Sir Lancelot.

In this stanza, "Lancelot" replaces "Camelot" in the only

variant of the refrain pattern, evidently now either taking the
place of, or standing for, the city. The verbal progression,
"rode," "came dazzling" and "flamed," not only gains in
kinetic energy, but also takes on potential energy through

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 THE LADY OF SHALOTT

the increasing brilliance of light with

associated. The adjectives in these ve
"bold," add to this suggestion of poten
noun, "a bow-shot," by which Tennyso
tance of Lancelot from Shalott, both sugg
which his image in the mirror will aff
itself irrefragably masculine, the meth
distance suggesting the vulnerability of
This description of Lancelot establishe
ironies of the poem. While the physical
lot places a heavy, almost overwhelming
a figure of masculine aggressiveness, po
nyson makes it clear that Lancelot's act
completely devoid of the intentions w
suggests. He is a "loyal knight and true,
of section two, and this is made perfectly
of devotion on his shield. It is the fact o
presence—rather than any deliberate
which is to destroy the Lady of Shalott.
After the initial description of Lanc
Tennyson describes different parts of
pings, suggesting at the same time an
within the Lady watching him that be
exhilarated and intoxicated. The compa
and dizzying expansion, reflecting in thei
of sensibility to which the Lady is b
bridle "glitter[ing] free" immediately co
of the stars glittering in a "golden Gal
the helmet and feather suggests tremen
and expands into the simile of the "be
mic and masculine flame. The meteor moves over "still
Shalott," emphasizing the active-passive dichotomy, "trailing
light," or expending limitless energy for some incomprehen
sible purpose. The final focus upon Lancelot is directed to
his "coal-black curls," recalling the "curly shepherd-lad" and
"long-hair'd page" of section two, but here brought to full
maturity by the intensity of the "coal-black" and the meta

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 THE CENTENNIAL REVIEW

morphosis of the crimson of the page's

flame" of Lancelot's helmet and feather.

So far in this section, Lancelot has performed no conscious

act that calls attention to himself. His image, as the Lady
sees it "flash . . . into the crystal mirror," has been either
visual or auditory, from the noise of his armor and the bells on
his bridle. But now he bursts into song, and it is this which
drives the Lady to leave her loom and go to the window.
His song in itself is senseless—merely an outpouring of
well-being, an expression of happy health and dynamism.
All that the Lady hears is a "tirra lirra" refrain, or a lyric
outburst, but that is enough—or rather, too much. Tenny
son again employs focus to suggest the full significance of her
act of self-destruction, but this time the focus expands rather
than narrows:

She left the web, she left the loom;

She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down on Camelot.

Here, repetition enforces the dramatic action of the Lady.

"She" in each verse is immediately followed by the verb:
"left," "made . . . paces," "saw," "saw" and "look'd." The
Lady's actions become paramount, and the repetitions drive
us, through suspense, to the final "look'd"; the Lady is seeing
reality for the first time. Her eye travels from the water-lilies
surrounding her island to the field where she sees Lancelot's
helmet and feather, and finally to Camelot, the point of
intense life at the end of the road he is traveling. Through
the magic of Lancelot's song she is moved from a vision of
the world to its reality, from the reflected images in her mir
ror to the actuality of the landscape, and to the exuberant
vitality of Camelot itself.
In the last section of the poem, the progression from in
ternal to external focus is complete. In the first section the
movement of the second half of the stanzas is inward to
Shalott. In section two, shadows are shown intruding into

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 THE LADY OF SHALOTT

the inner world of the Lady's tower. In the th

vision of Lancelot and the sound of his so
seclusion. Finally, in the last section, the Lad
outward from Shalott, and she follows bot
the funeral train to Camelot.

Tennyson's manipulation of natural images is quite dif

ferent in the last section of the poem from that of the three
previous sections. As I attempted to show at the beginning
of this analysis, Tennyson's initial treatment of landscape is
designed to give a sense of reality to the poem, to draw the
reader into the poem and thus make him susceptible to its
"magic." Though the initial landscape was vitalized by a
subtle arrangement of verbs, it was not imbued with per
sonality; its vitality represented the vitality of life, or activity,
in general. But in the last section of the poem, landscape
changes from the objective and general to the subjective and
specific. It is no longer something that appears as shadows
in the Lady's mirror, but it becomes rather the mirror of
her own shattered sensibility, and what it gains in symbolic
intensity it loses in objective reality. The Lady is no longer
contemplative or objective; somehow the overwhelming pres
ence of Lancelot has destroyed what we might call her sense
of self. She has become submerged in the irrationality of
vitalism, or the life-course, which has its natural but incom
prehensible end in death. And through this loss of a sense
of individuality, or of rational control, she has slipped into a
state of "trance," almost of unconsciousness. In Nietzsche's
terms, the Dionysian, the irrational, has confronted the Apol
lonian, the rational, and in this instance has destroyed it.
This defeat of objectivity is reflected in the change that
occurs in the landscape. In the first section of the poem it
was perceived as vital but ordered, and both the Lady's isle
and the landscape around Camelot were measured out and
bound with finite, balanced, lines:

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky; (italics mine)

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 THE CENTENNIAL REVIEW

This landscape is Apollonian, existing wit

and forming a complete and rational (
exactly rational, ordinary) natural struct
the poem begins. There is a sense of fi
as if the poet is looking down on a toy w
move "up and down," and life, for all its
evenly and uneventfully. Such is the wo
the Lady in her "mirror clear," and the clar
serves to rationalize and objectify her
world. But this world is "shadow"; its ord
illusion, and the Apollonian control exer
finally is not sufficient to hide the reality
perception at last breaks through the ar
istic mirror; the mirror symbolizes the rati
delicate balance, sustained only by objecti
forces over which it can exert no real control. The nature of
the Lady's perceptions, her first direct, sensuous communica
tion with the outside world, is not a shift from an ideal to a
real world, but from surface reality to the vital chaos beneath
it; the communication cannot be analyzed, but can only be
perceived. For it is a necessary condition of such communica
tion that it will not submit to rational procedures; its essence
is complete irrationality, it is not structure but force, and
force cannot be suspended for examination or it ceases to
be force.

The transformation of imagery in the last section of the

poem creates a landscape that is intuitive rather than intel
lectual, subjective rather than objective. We can understand
more clearly Tennyson's transformation of the "Shalott"
landscape if we place beside it an early suppressed poem,
e / M

Oi Qsoy-res :

All thought, all creeds, all dreams are true

All visions wild and strange;
Man is the measure of all truth
Unto himself. All truth is change:
All men do walk in sleep, and all
Have faith in what they dream:

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 THE LADY OF SHALOTT

For all things are as they seem to all,

And all things flow like a stream.

There is no rest, no calm, no pause,

Nor good or ill, nor light or shade,
Nor essence nor eternal laws;
For nothing is, but all is made.
But if I dream that all these are,
They are to me for what I dream,
For all things are as they seem to all,
And all things flow like a stream.

This poem poses a reality completely subje

the individual. Each shaped reality has equa
it is subjectively perceived, rather than ra
The essence of such perception is that it is
dream is a continuous flow of energy, and
the dream is embodied in the change which
But the first landscape of "Shalott," real
fixed. As a fixed image it is illusion, the o
caused by the mind's arresting and systema
of its perception, thus denying their basi
energy and process, their conditions for ex
of time and space. The landscape of the fourt
poem is the same landscape as that of the
been replaced in a subjective context. It is n
but energy; its being is replaced by becomin
is the subjective reality of personal vision,
from objective illusion—now "all things ar
all."

The final landscape reflects the possibilities for nonrational

action that were carefully developed in the picture of Lance
lot. On one level, then, this new landscape represents forces
latent beneath the order which the rational mind attempts
to impose on its sense perceptions. On another level, it is
a scenic correlative of the Lady's own agony, as she is weighed
down by her Dionysian trance. The qualifying words in the
first four verses of the first stanza express her agony, and the
tremendous pressure, caused by her loss of rational control

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 THE CENTENNIAL REVIEW

and her subsequent submersion in the proc

which she is being subjected:
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complainin
Heavily the low sky raining (italics mine)
Nature, ceasing to operate on logical pri
come anthropomorphic, in the sense that its
become psychological rather than rational.
of rational boundaries is vivified in Tennys
sonification, "The broad stream in his bank
In submitting to the world of process, the
cease to be an artist; rather her art itself is tra
art of the first two sections of the poem was h
mimetic expression of her knowledge of reality
in her mirror. But the art of the final section
from spatial to temporal expression, a vision of
perceived as process, where meaning results
rather than fixed, relationships.

Ill

As the change from objective to subjective landscape was

prepared for by the description of Lancelot in section three,
so the change in art forms from pictorial to auditory is pre
pared for by the appearance of music and song earlier in the
poem. Three songs, as well as the music of the funeral proces
sion, occur in "The Lady of Shalott," and each of them func
tions with a different significance. The first song is the Lady's,
singing while she weaves:
Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly,
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot.
And by the moon the reaper weary
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
Land of Shalott.'"

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 THE LADY OF SHALOTT

Her song is heard only by the reaper, h

very early morning and even then it is
whisper his response to it. The song is
the river down to Camelot, and it thus
Lady will sing as she floats down the r
death. The Lady's first song is a fairy
an objective or isolated world, it acts up
the reaper, but there is no hint that it
him other than its mysteriousness. Th
purely sensuous and has no cognitive v
The second song, sung by Lancelot, is a
lirra," which causes the Lady to fulfil the
time that human sound penetrates her c
song in section one, it is happy. The dif
two is that the Lady's song is disembod
song, in its wordless exuberance, is a f
of earthly energy. While Lancelot's son
devoid of rational content, it is subject
Lady's song is meaningless because of it
lot's is meaningful because of its expre
vitality. It is the song of Dionysus, and
cannot be shaped into system, it nev
reality for that very reason; reality is the
sensation, its only meaning is change, a
sion of objectivity the Lady's mirror cr
externalized system, but internal chao
a reality that the Lady is plunged by La
We are left now to determine the sign
song sung by the Lady, the "carol, mo
rises out of her trance, and expresses h
reality. It is tragic, and its tragedy is i
Apollonian illusion by Dionysian reality
tifying "things" and placing them out
identify and individualize itself. But
vidual identity cannot be sustained fore
tutes the "curse" of the poem. At the beg
the Lady has no idea of the nature of

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 THE CENTENNIAL REVIEW

knows a "whisper" that there is a cur

evidently the only vestige left to her in
vital connection with the land of subje
process, a land Tennyson will later call
Idylls of the King.
Her realization of the curse comes wh
turned into Lancelot's song. She is sudd
the artificiality of her remote world, and
artificiality of her notion of individuali
the burden of that revelation; from the f
her art she is subsumed into the reality
of time that leads to death. Her journe
Camelot is in a very real sense her surrend
life and, inevitably, death, which Came
futile attempt to retain her individual
name on the boat, is ironically indicated
nition only of the beauty of a mysterious
of the poem is the truth of sensuous, liv
to visual but nameless beauty.
"The Lady of Shalott" does not prese
system, nor does it give us a formula co
of art versus life. It presents us with a d
an ambiguity that provides the energy
Tennyson's major works. Two kinds of a
us in the poem, the essentially mimeti
weaver, "holding the mirror up to na
mimetic art of the Lady's final song—wh
but is not mimetic in the usual sense of
tion. The song imitates not objects in n
force of nature which makes objects beh
Both kinds of art have value. The art of
the illusion of order, timelessness and eter
the first stanza invokes this order through
an eternal present tense. But the pictu
eternity. It is time arrested, and theref
fice has been made; life has been sacrif
namic has been made static. When life intrudes into the

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 THE LADY OF SHALOTT

tower, the tense begins to shift fro

when we reach the Lancelot section
moved completely into a past whic
things flow like a stream" as we exp
stream can neither be stopped nor re
But in gaining such knowledge, anot
made. The artist may no longer hold
the illusive "what might be." He may
"what is"; and "what is" in "The L
panacea. It is merely the course of ti
inexorable flow of experience, in wh
human values, or individual motivati
cance, as in the case of Lancelot, wh
in process, acts with a force entirely un
mind to destroy the Lady. Tennyson do
a choice as to the proper function of
only a picture of two kinds of art. The
out hope, but its suggestion of control
and the life of this illusion, like the lif
too precarious and fragile. But the a
song, which traces faithfully and tra
flow of experience to death, is tragic
or eternity, it leaves us with the ima
animal, trapped in the actual, and force
the curse of time, as the only reality h

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